View full sizeTrails of Africa curator Wes Sims and animal trainer Jessica Kretzschmar talk in the elephant barn, where Bulwagi, a 13,000-pound elephant, seems to listen to them. (The Birmingham News/Linda Stelter)

Wes Sims used to pay a quarter as a child to see the animals in his hometown of Hugo, Okla., where a circus quartered for the winter.

"I probably, on some wave, got into working in zoos because of this," he said.

Sims is curator for the Birmingham Zoo's "Trails of Africa" exhibit, and he has had a busy month. Sims, who was hired in February to oversee the new exhibit, is in charge of managing the staff and animal collection at "Trails," as well as overseeing the animals' day-to-day care. That job got a lot bigger -- literally -- this month with the addition of Bulwagi, the zoo's 13,000-pound male elephant.

And two more elephants are on the way, though unseasonably cold winter weather has forced some rescheduling in when the zoo will acquire them. In the meantime, Sims and the animal keepers working with the "Trails" animals are preparing for the exhibit's opening, tentatively scheduled for spring break 2011.

In addition to the elephants, the zoo will exhibit rhinos, hippos, antelope, zebras and other animals in a multi-acre simulated savannah.

"What we're doing here has rarely been tried with elephants, and never with strictly male elephants, in a community zoo," Sims said.

Sims said he has worked with elephants for 12 years, at zoos in Colorado Springs, Tulsa, Jacksonville, Fla., and Oklahoma City. He calls them the most intelligent animals in the zoo, though he admits the primate keepers may disagree. But as with any other animals, keepers may feel comfortable reading an animal's body language but struggle sometimes to know exactly what it is experiencing.

"We have to guard against projecting human emotions onto them," he said. "We tend to say animals are excited, or scared, or aggressive, or confident. But those words don't tell the whole story. They don't necessarily have the same emotions humans do."

Instead, keepers learn to read animal reactions and reinforce behaviors they want to see through daily training. Even something as simple as giving the elephant a bath becomes an important task to gauge the animal's health.

"We train everyday, because it's important to their well-being," Sims said. "We can't take the day off, because we need to keep that rapport with them. There's always someone here with them. Even on Christmas or New Year's. And we try hard to make sure that there's consistency among us all in the way we interact with them."

The vision for "Trails of Africa" involves exhibiting the animals in a large yard, while keeping the animals separated. Doing this means having a good idea of each animal's individual personality, and slowly getting the animals used to each other.

"We built this exhibit with this in mind, to push the envelope and add different animals and keep it flexible," he said. "We don't just throw a whole bunch of animals into a yard without some safety measures in place. But sometimes when you go to some zoos, an exhibit will be the same 10 years after the day it opened. We're looking at something much more unique."

Ideally, Sims said, a zoo visitor may see a certain grouping of animals in the Africa yard in the morning, leave for lunch, and come back to see a different group out there. It will take time, though, for the workers and the animals to get used to the facility and each other.

"What we're talking about won't be there on day one," he said. "But we'll have a number of things accomplished by day one. This exhibit is going to give us the flexibility to grow and change."

And adding the bull elephants will be a challenge, since the zoo's male elephant herd will be the first of its kind attempted in a zoo. Elephants tend to travel in female-dominated herds, with males pushed out at maturity to fend for themselves. The zoo hopes to become a center for scientific observation and study of male elephants.